AuthorTopic: Alaska: The only choice. (Read 13839 times)

4 to 6 weeks! That's child's play. It seems like 4-6 months here in Florida! Mosquitoes don't care for cold too much. And I can't even believe someone here is worried about them. We're talking about freedom! Are a few bites a year too high a price to pay? Plus, no doubt, the government is in charge of mosquito "control" up there too.. and if we had our way, organizations that would actually be effective could take over. By the way.. I love the Alaska idea. Unlike the lower 48, moving to Alaska sounds like an adventure. It's like an undiscovered country to us lower 48ers. Hell, the opposition to Alaska you read in the forums could be the vocal minority. If someone like me, Florida born and raised, is willing to move to Alaska, perhaps there are more than you think.

I believe from what I heard that the bug season is around what is called breakup and from the lady at theb and b I believe it lasts about 4 to 6 weeks ... so thatwould be about mid may to late june ...

Solitar

Mosquitoes are friendly little buggers! Often they come and go without inflicting any pain. Their legacy gives you something which feels good to scratch. By comparison the blackflies and deerflies take a chunk out of you that hurts and bleeds - sorta like leeches (another critter I encountered in Algonquin Provincial Park in SE Ontario). But at least the deer flies are, most of the time, slow enough to swat as they circle around one's head.

As to the season for mosquitoes, here near treeline in Colorado and in Northern Maine I've experienced mosquitoes from May to October. They start hatching in the first warm sunny puddles of mud season and stay with us beyond aautumn's first frost. Some of us look forward to winter's first hard freezes because the first few frosts are not enough -- the little buggers are still out there!

I expect the mosquito season to be the same five months or so across the northern tier anywhere there is sufficient moisture -- northern Vermont, New Hampshire and the lakes and prairie potholes of the Dakotas, Wyoming's northwest mountains (which a friend tells me about), Montana, Idaho, and Alaska of course. As to the latter, here is an interesting item."Six- to ten thousand mosquitoes can simultaneously draw blood from one caribou, Morschel wrote, citing the work of a Russian scientist who also estimated that individual caribou in a certain region of Siberia lost more than five pounds of blood per summer to mosquitoes."http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF13/1344.html

The parts of Alaska that I've generally heard as being mosquito country are in the SE panhandle, where they have something of a rain forest climate, the interior, and believe it or not, the north slope. Like someone else mentioned, that standing water on the permafrost serves as quite the breeding ground for them.

I've seen video of musk oxen out on the tundra, and I noticed that they were quite often surrounded by hoards of insects. I'd imagine that bug season up there would have to be fairly short though, especially in the northern most parts of the state.

I've been told by various Alaska residents that the coastal areas, like Anchorage, don't have much in the way of a problem with mosquitos like the rest of the state because of winds coming in from off of the ocean. That would seem to make sense.

While I realize that Alaska is pretty low on most peoples' list, it seems to me that such a wealth of natural resources should not be overlooked - - despite the climate (and I am writing this from SoCal). To that end I have a question about the following...

On the state reports page, under Alaska, Joseph Littlejohn writes: "Their [the Alaska Independence Party's] main issue is self determination. A vote was held in 1958 giving Alaska the right to either become a state, remain a territory, or become a commonwealth. The AIP believes that United Nations resolutions on the right to self-determination meant that they should have been given the right to choose independence. Therefore, they favor a new referendum including independence as an option."

So what happens if FSPers move to Alaska, push the vote in the UN, and independence passes? Could the newly-founded country of Alaska just nationalize all the assets in the state? This would not be warmly welcomed in D.C., but are they likely to invade? Additionally, federalizing the land would allow the citizens of Alaska to decide on how the resources could be developed, etc., not to mention probably providing a fair number of jobs as these resources are mined, drilled, etc.

To be clear, I am no fan of the UN, but with so many people worried about getting other nations' ok before acting, if the independence vote went through the UN, the fedgov might be less inclined to invade, attack, etc., because of public and international opinion and pressures.

I am new to all this but if there is that much of a spirit of independence in such a sparsely populated state, which just happens to have a wealth of natural resources, doesn't it merit a closer look?